Do Not Judge

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

SUMMARY: Do not judge, that you will not be not judged. As you judge, so shall you be judged. Judge righteously, do not respect persons in reproving for transgressions. The meaning is not that we should not find fault with sinners, nor that we should consent to those who act wickedly. We do not prejudge when the Lord is to be the judge. For with what judgment you judge, it is righteous that you be judged all the same. This passage announces a retribution proportioned to the merits. Both Irenaeus and Hippolytus taught that the heretics were hypocrites with the beam in the eye. The phrase, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs” is uniquely applied to the Eucharist in the Didache. The dogs and swine were untrained hearers, the heathen, the foolish, the lost, or those who are given up to impiety and pleasures. Clement of Rome: Let us therefore, brothers and sisters, be of humble mind, laying aside all haughtiness, and pride, and foolishness, and angry feelings; and let us act according to that which is written, for the Holy Spirit says, “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, neither let the rich man glory in his riches; but let him that glories glory in the Lord, in diligently seeking Him, and doing judgment and righteousness,” being especially mindful of the words of the Lord Jesus which He spoke, teaching us meekness and longsuffering. For He spoke: “Be merciful, that you may obtain mercy; forgive, that it may be forgiven to you; as you do, so shall it be done unto you; as you judge, so shall you be judged; as you are kind, so shall kindness be shown to you; with what measure you mete, with the same it shall be measured to you.” By this precept and by these rules let us establish ourselves, that we walk with all humility in obedience to His holy words. For the holy word says, “On whom shall I look, but on him that is meek and peaceable, and that trembles at My words?”

THE DIDACHE: Judge righteously, do not respect persons in reproving for transgressions.

POLYCARP: Be mindful of what the Lord said in His teaching: “Do not judge, that you will not be not judged; forgive, and it shall be forgiven unto you; be merciful, that you may obtain mercy; with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

POLYCARP: And let the presbyters be compassionate and merciful to all, bringing back those that wander, visiting all the sick, and not neglecting the widow, the orphan, or the poor, but always “providing for that which is becoming in the sight of God and man;” abstaining from all wrath, respect of persons, and unjust judgment; keeping far off from all covetousness, not quickly crediting an evil report against any one, not severe in judgment, as knowing that we are all under a debt of sin.

TATIAN: As for those who wish to learn our philosophy, we do not test them by their looks, nor do we judge those who come to us by their outward appearance; for we argue that there may be strength of mind in all, though they may be weak in body.

TATIAN: “Judge not, that you be not judged: condemn not, that you be not condemned: forgive, and it shall be forgiven you: release, and you shall be released: give, that you may be given to; with good measure, abundant, full, they shall thrust into your bosoms. With what measure you measure it shall be measured to you. See to it what you hear: with what measure you measure it shall be measured to you; and you shall be given more. I say unto those that hear, he that has shall be given unto; and he that does not have, that which he regards as his shall be taken from him. And he spoke to them a parable, “Can a blind man perhaps guide a blind man? Shall they not both fall into a hollow? A disciple is not better than his master; every perfect man shall be as his master. Why do you look at the speck which is in the eye of your brother, but do not consider the column that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Brother, I will take out the speck from your eye;' and the column which is in your eye you do not see? You hypocrite, first take out the column from your eye; and then you shall see to take the speck out from the eye of your brother. Do not give that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest they trample them with their feet, and return and wound you.”

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: As you do, so shall it be done to you; as you give, so shall it be given to you; as you judge, so shall you be judged; as you show kindness, so shall kindness be shown to you: with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: How then does man give these things? For I will give not only to friends, but to the friends of friends. And who is it that is the friend of God? Do not you judge who is worthy or who is unworthy. For it is possible you may be mistaken in your opinion. As in the uncertainty of ignorance it is better to do good to the undeserving for the sake of the deserving, than by guarding against those that are less good to fail to meet in with the good. For though sparing, and aiming at testing, who will receive meritoriously or not, it is possible for you to neglect some that are loved by God; the penalty for which is the punishment of eternal fire. But by offering to all in turn that need, you must of necessity by all means find some one of those who have power with God to save. “Judge not, then, that you be not judged. With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again; good measure, pressed and shaken, and running over, shall be given to you.” Open your compassion to all who are enrolled the disciples of God; not looking contemptuously to personal appearance, nor carelessly disposed to any period of life.

TERTULLIAN: “Judge not, and you shall not be judged; condemn not, and you shall not be condemned; forgive, and you shall be forgiven; give, and it shall be given to you: good measure, pressed down, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that you measure, it shall be measured to you again.” As it seems to me, this passage announces a retribution proportioned to the merits.

TERTULLIAN: Why, then, do we believe Him a Judge, if not an Avenger too? This He promises that He will be to us in return, saying, “Vengeance belongs to me, and I will avenge;” that is, “Leave patience to me, and I will reward patience.” For when He says, “Judge not, lest you be judged,” does He not require patience? For who will refrain from judging another, but he who shall be patient in not revenging himself?

ANONYMOUS: You, O Novatian, judge and declare that the lapsed have no hope of peace and mercy, nor do you incline your ear to the rebuke of the apostle, when he says, “Who are you, who judges another man’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Yes, he shall stand. God is mighty to establish him.” . . . The Holy Spirit, in the person of those same lapsed people, rebukes you when He says, “Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy: because if I have fallen, I shall also rise again; and if I shall walk in darkness, the Lord is my light. I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against Him, until He justify my cause, and execute judgment and justice, and bring me forth to the light. I shall behold His righteousness; and she that is my enemy shall see me, and shall cover herself with confusion.” I beseech you, have you not read, “Do not boast, and do not speak loftily, and do not let arrogance proceed out of your mouth: for the Lord lifts the poor from the earth; He raises up the beggar from the dunghill, and makes him to sit with the mighty ones of the people?” Have you not read, that “the Lord resists the proud, and gives grace to the humble?” Have you not read, “Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled?” Have you not read, that “God destroys the remembrance of the proud, and does not forsake the memory of the lowly?” Have you not read, that “with what judgment a man shall judge he must be judged?”

CYPRIAN: Moreover, we do not prejudge when the Lord is to be the judge; except that if He shall find the repentance of the sinners full and sound, He will then ratify what shall have been here determined by us. If, however, any one should delude us with the pretense of repentance, God, who is not mocked, and who looks into man’s heart, will judge of those things which we have imperfectly looked into, and the Lord will amend the sentence of His servants; while yet, dearest brother, we ought to remember that it is written, “A brother that helps a brother shall be exalted;” and that the apostle also has said, “Let all of you individually have regard to yourselves, lest you also be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ;” also that, rebuking the haughty, and breaking down their arrogance, he says in his epistle, “Let him that thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall;” and in another place he says, “Who are you that judges another man’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls; yes, he shall stand, for God is able to make him stand.”

CYPRIAN: We must not rashly judge one another. In the Gospel according to Luke: “Judge not, that you shall not be judged: condemn not, that you shall not be condemned.” Of this same subject to the Romans: “Who are you that judges another man’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. But he shall stand; for God is able to make him stand.” And again: “Therefore you are without excuse, O every man that judges: for in that in which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you do the same things which you judge. But do you hope, who judges those who do evil, and you do the same, that you shall escape the judgment of God?” Also in the first Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians: “And let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” And again: “If any man thinks that he knows anything, he knows not yet in what manner he ought to know.”

ORIGEN: What will he suffer, who at first did not hear, but required witnesses, or even refused to hear these, but was brought to the church, God knows; for we do not declare it, according to the precept, “Judge not that you be not judged,” “until the Lord come, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the counsels of the hearts.” But, with reference to the seeming harshness in the case of those who have committed less sins, one might say that it is not possible for him who has not heard twice in succession to hear the third time, so as, on this account, no longer to be as a Gentile or a publican, or no longer to stand in need of the disapproval in presence of all the church. For we must bear in mind this, “So it is not the will of My Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” For if “we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether it be good or bad,” let each one with all his power do what he can so that he may not receive punishment for more evil things done in the body, even if he is going to receive back for all the wrongs which he has done; but it should be our ambition to procure the reward for a greater number of good deeds, since “with what measure we mete, it shall be measured to us,” and, “according to the works of our own hands shall it happen unto us.”

TERTULLIAN: The Lord Himself demonstrates the manner in which He threatens such as judge: “For with what judgment you judge, judgment shall be given on you.” Thus He has not prohibited judging, but taught how to do it. From which the apostle judges, and that in a case of fornication, that “such a man must be surrendered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh;” chiding them likewise because “brothers and sisters” were not “judged at the bar of the saints:” for he goes on and says, “To what purpose is it for me to judge those who are without?”

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: Even now I fear, as it is said, “to cast the pearls before swine, or they will tread them under foot, and turn and rend us.” For it is difficult to exhibit the really pure and transparent words respecting the true light, to swinish and untrained hearers. For scarcely could anything which they could hear be more ludicrous than these to the multitude; nor any subjects on the other hand more admirable or more inspiring to those of noble nature.

TERTULLIAN: I must not omit an account of the conduct also of the heretics—how frivolous it is, how worldly, how merely human, without seriousness, without authority, without discipline, as suits their creed. To begin with, it is doubtful who is a catechumen, and who a believer; they have all access alike, they hear alike, they pray alike—even heathens, if any such happen to come among them. “That which is holy they will cast to the dogs, and their pearls,” although to be sure they are not real ones, “they will fling to the swine.” All are puffed up, all offer you knowledge. Their catechumens are perfect before they are fully taught. The very women of these heretics, how wanton they are! For they are bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures—it may be even to baptize. Their ordinations are carelessly administered, capricious, changeable. At one time they put novices in office; at another time, men who are bound to some secular employment; at another, persons who have apostatized from us, to bind them by vainglory, since they cannot by the truth. Nowhere is promotion easier than in the camp of rebels, where the mere fact of being there is a foremost service. And so it comes to pass that today one man is their bishop, tomorrow another; today he is a deacon who tomorrow is a reader; today he is a presbyter who tomorrow is a layman. For even on laymen do they impose the functions of priesthood.

TERTULLIAN: But they whose office it is, know that baptism is not rashly to be administered. “Give to every one who begs you,” has a reference of its own, appertaining especially to almsgiving. On the contrary, this precept is rather to be looked at carefully: “Do not give the holy thing to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine;” and, “Do not lay hands easily on any; do not share other men’s sins.” If Philip so “easily” baptized the chamberlain, let us reflect that a manifest and conspicuous evidence that the Lord deemed him worthy had been interposed. The Spirit had enjoined Philip to proceed to that road: the eunuch himself, too, was not found idle, nor as one who was suddenly seized with an eager desire to be baptized; but, after going up to the temple for prayer’s sake, being intently engaged on the divine Scripture, was thus suitably discovered—to whom God had, unasked, sent an apostle, which one, again, the Spirit bade adjoin himself to the chamberlain’s chariot. The Scripture which he was reading falls in opportunely with his faith: Philip, being requested, is taken to sit beside him; the Lord is pointed out; faith does not linger; water needs no waiting for; the work is completed, and the apostle snatched away. “But Paul too was, in fact, ‘speedily’ baptized:” for Simon, his host, speedily recognized him to be “an appointed vessel of election.” . . . If any understand the weighty import of baptism, they will fear its reception more than its delay: sound faith is secure of salvation.

ORIGEN: The Savior with a knowledge of the difference of pearls, of which some are in kind goodly and others worthless, said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls;” for, if some of the pearls had not been worthless, it would not have been said, “to a man seeking goodly pearls.” Now among the words of all kinds which profess to announce truth, and among those who report them, he seeks pearls. And let the prophets be, so to speak, the mussels which conceive the dew of heaven, and become pregnant with the word of truth from heaven, the goodly pearls which, according to the phrase here set forth, the merchantman seeks. And the leader of the pearls, on the finding of which the rest are found with it, is the very costly pearl, the Christ of God, the Word which is superior to the precious letters and thoughts in the law and the prophets, on the finding of which also all the rest are easily taken. And the Savior holds converse with all the disciples, as merchant men who are not only seeking the goodly pearls but who have found them and possess them, when He says, “Do not cast your pearls before swine.” Now it is manifest that these things were said to the disciples from that which is prefixed to His words, “And seeing the multitudes He went up into the mountain, and when He had sat down His disciples came to Him;” for, in the course of those words, He said, “Do not give that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine.” Perhaps, then, he is not a disciple of Christ, who does not possess pearls or the very costly pearl, the pearls, I mean, which are goodly; not the cloudy, nor the darkened, such as the words of the heterodox, which are brought forth not at the sunrise, but at the sunset or in the north, if it is necessary to take also into the comparison those things on account of which we found a difference in the pearls which are produced in different places. And perhaps the muddy words and the heresies which are bound up with works of the flesh, are the darkened pearls, and those which are produced in the marshes, not goodly pearls.

CYPRIAN: I had frequently, Demetrianus, treated with contempt your railing and noisy clamor with sacrilegious mouth and impious words against the one and true God, thinking it more modest and better, silently to scorn the ignorance of a mistaken man, than by speaking to provoke the fury of a senseless one. Neither did I do this without the authority of the divine teaching, since it is written, “Do not speak in the ears of a fool, lest when he hears you he should despise the wisdom of your words;” and again, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him.” And we are, moreover, bidden to keep what is holy within our own knowledge, and not expose it to be trodden down by swine and dogs, since the Lord speaks, saying, “Do not give that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, in case they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” For when you often used to come to me with the desire of contradicting rather than with the wish to learn, and preferred impudently to insist on your own views, which you shouted with noisy words, to patiently listening to mine, it seemed to me foolish to contend with you; since it would be an easier and slighter thing to restrain the angry waves of a turbulent sea with shouts, than to check your madness by arguments. Assuredly it would be both a vain and ineffectual labor to offer light to a blind man, discourse to a deaf one, or wisdom to a brute; since neither can a brute apprehend, nor can a blind man admit the light, nor can a deaf man hear.

CYPRIAN: In Solomon, in the Proverbs: “Do not say anything in the ears of a foolish man; in case, when he hears it, he may mock at your wise words.” Also in the Gospel according to Matthew: “Do not give that which is holy to dogs; neither cast your pearls before the swine, in case perhaps they trample them down with their feet, and turn again and crush you.”

ARCHELAUS: “But if our Gospel is hid, it is hid in them that are lost.” You see that it is hid in them that are lost. “For it is not proper to give the holy things to dogs.” And furthermore, is it only the God of the Old Testament that has blinded the minds of them who do not believe? No, has not Jesus Himself also said: “Therefore I speak to them in parables: that seeing, they may not see?” Is it then because He hated them that He desired them not to see? Or is it not on account of their unworthiness, since they closed their own eyes? For wherever wickedness is a matter self-chosen, there too there is the absence of grace. “For unto him that has shall be given, but from him that does not have shall be taken away even that which he seems to have.”

METHODIUS: They insult the commandments, accomplishing the will of the spirits of evil, and cast holy things to dogs, and pearls before swine, in the same manner as those of whom the prophet says with indignation, “They read the law to those without;” for the Jews were not to read the law going forth out of the gates of Jerusalem or out of their houses; and for this reason the prophet blames them strongly, and cries that they were liable to condemnation, because, while they were transgressing the commandments, and acting impiously towards God, they were pretentiously reading the law, as if, indeed, they were piously observing its precepts; but they did not receive it in their souls, holding it firmly with faith, but rejected it, denying it by their works.

METHODIUS: “Do not give that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine.” . . . If we must understand by pearls the glorious and divine teachings, and by swine those who are given up to impiety and pleasures, from whom are to be withheld and hidden the apostle’s teachings, which stir men up to piety and faith in Christ, see how you say that no Christians can be converted from their impiety by the teachings of the apostles. For they would never cast the mysteries of Christ to those who, through lack of faith, are like swine. Either, therefore, these things were cast before all the Greeks and other unbelievers, and were preached by the disciples of Christ, and converted them from impiety to the faith of Christ, as we believers certainly confess, and then the words, “Do not cast your pearls before swine,” can no longer mean what has been said; or meaning this, we must say that faith in Christ and deliverance from impiety have been accorded to none of the unbelievers, whom we compare to swine, by the apostolic instructions enlightening their souls like pearls. But this is blasphemous. Therefore the pearls in this place are not to be taken to mean the deepest doctrines, and the swine the impious; nor are we to understand the words, “Do not cast your pearls before swine,” as forbidding us to cast before the impious and unbelieving the deep and sanctifying doctrines of faith in Christ; but we must take the pearls to mean virtues, with which the soul is adorned as with precious pearls; and not to cast them before swine, as meaning that we are not to cast these virtues, such as chastity, temperance, righteousness, and truth, that we are not to cast these to impure pleasures, for these are like swine, lest they, fleeing from the virtues, cause the soul to live a swinish and a vicious life.